About Me

I was a reporter and columnist for 40 years for a chain of newspapers in the suburbs of Chicago. I'm a military veteran having served in the United States Army Combat Engineers (Cpl. E-4) and a Korean War veteran with an Honorable Discharge from the Armed Forces of the United States of America

Friday, January 18, 2008

While the mainstream media in the United States continue to hoodwink the American public about how well things are going in Iraq, there are signs that the government of Iraq is about to collapse.The "surge" was intended to open the door to reconciliation in Iraq, but the opposite is happening. There is now a growing block of anti-U.S. politicos in Iraq who are looking for ways to oust the United States out of Iraq.

The mainstream press in the U.S. refuses to tell the American public the truth about conditions in Iraq and so you have a vast majority of the people in America actually believing things are stabilizing in Iraq.

The shame of it all is not one mainstream media source in the United States is willing to go out on a limb and tell the American public the truth about Iraq.

There is one blogger who has devoted his entire blog to the REAL conditions in Iraq and not the phony baloney put out by the Bush White House and news organizations like Fox News.

That blogger is Bill Corcoran, a military veteran, who has devoted his entire blog http://corksphere.blogspot.com/ to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.Below is the true story of what is taking place in Iraq and not the smokescreen FOX NEWS and other news organizations are feeding the American public.Bill Corcoran, Chicago, host of http://corksphere.blogspot.com/

On January 13 an emerging Sunni-Shiite nationalist bloc in Iraq signed a groundbreaking agreement aimed at ending Iraq's civil war, blocking the privatization of Iraq's oil industry and checkmating the breakaway Kurdish state. It's a big step forward, and it could change the face of Iraqi politics in 2008.

For the past two years, Iraqi nationalists--opposed to the US occupation, opposed to Al Qaeda and opposed to Iran's heavyhanded influence in Iraqi affairs--have struggled to assert themselves. The nascent coalition contains the seeds of true national reconciliation in Iraq, but it has emerged independently of the United States. Unrelated to the constant American pressure on the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to meet various reconciliation "benchmarks," the new coalition is designed either to sweep Maliki out of office or force him to join it.

Enormous obstacles stand in the way of the Sunni-Shiite coalition, and Iraq is just as likely to descend into a new round of intense civil war as it is to stabilize under a new ruling bloc. Still, it could work, but there's a big if--if the United States steps back and gets out of the way.Since the rigged Iraqi elections of 2005, the United States has supported a shaky and now utterly discredited four-party coalition in Iraq. Two of those parties are the ultra-religious Shiite parties, the Islamic Dawa Party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), both strongly supported by Iran. The other two are the Kurdish warlord parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). During that time, Iraq's two prime ministers, Ibrahim Jaafari (2005-06) and Maliki (2006-2008)--both from Dawa--have staunchly refused to open the door to increased Sunni Arab participation in the government. But now that coalition is falling apart, and its partners are increasingly at odds with one another.

The potential collapse of the Shiite-Kurdish pact that has ruled Iraq under the American occupation has created a freewheeling search for competing alliances among the myriad political factions that have emerged since Saddam Hussein's overthrow.

Partners in the new, twelve-party alliance include nearly all of the Sunni Arab parties, including the Sunni religious parties and the secular National Dialogue Front; the secular Iraqi National List of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite; two big Shiite parties, including Muqtada al-Sadr's bloc and the Fadhila (Virtue) Party; a faction of the Dawa Party; and assorted smaller groups, including independents in Iraq's Parliament. Among its goals, say its leaders, are to ensure that Iraq's "oil, natural gas, and other treasures [remain the] property of all the Iraqi people," opposing both the proposed new oil law that would open the door to privatization of the oil industry and the illegal oil deals signed by the Kurdish regional government. Another goal, they say, is to block the Kurdish takeover of the oil-rich region around Kirkuk in Iraq's north.And, they say, the new coalition will "overcome the narrow circle of sectarianism" by uniting Sunnis and Shiites.

What's more, there are reports of talks involving the remaining Sunni resistance groups--those that have not joined the American-sponsored Awakening movement and the so-called Concerned Local Citizens groups--in a broad-based national reconciliation effort. According to the Arab press, six Sunni resistance factions have been meeting in England in preparation for a proposed conference in Cairo with representatives of the Iraqi government and political parties. A parallel effort is under way at meetings in Beirut. And French President Nicolas Sarkozy, currently touring the Middle East, has renewed his country's offer to bring Iraq's warring political factions together. Sarkozy suggested "hosting in France, far from the heat of passions and on neutral ground, inter-Iraqi roundtable talks that are as large as possible." It's unclear whether Sarkozy's proposed conference would include representatives of the armed resistance, but it's possible. (An earlier offer by France to host similar talks got the cold shoulder from Maliki and no encouragement from the United States.)

The fact that Sadr's bloc opted to join the opposition bloc is critical. Not only does Sadr command thirty-two seats in Iraq's Parliament but on the ground in Baghdad and in the south his Mahdi Army militia is a formidable force. The Fadhila Party, too, has great power in and around Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, which controls the bulk of the oil industry and Iraq's exports.

A wild card in any political realignment in Iraq is the attitude of the powerful new Sahwa (Awakening) movement, the 100,000-strong paramilitary force whose backbone is Iraq's tribal leaders. Currently, the Sahwa movement is strong in Anbar, Diyala, Salahuddin and Nineveh provinces to the west and north of the capital, as well as in Baghdad itself and in the suburban belt south of Baghdad. Though Sahwa is not a party (and thus has no seats in Parliament), it is a power to be reckoned with, and it is being courted assiduously both by the new nationalist coalition and by Dawa and ISCI. If forced to choose, the Sahwa movement would be far more likely to align with nationalists than with Shiite sectarian parties, since the tribal leaders regard ISCI, in particular, as an agent of Iran.

So far, the United States has continued to prop up Maliki's shaky regime, despite its growing unpopularity. US officials fear that if Maliki were to fall, the results would be unpredictable--especially in an election year. Besides, the nationalists would be far less likely than Maliki to sign the proposed long-term extension of the American presence in Iraq that Maliki and President Bush intend to ink by July.A hint of how entrenched the American presence in Iraq might be came this week, when Iraq's defense minister, Abdul Qader Mohammed Jassim, came to the United States for an extended visit, during which he met with long-range planning staff at the Pentagon. During his visit, Jasim declared that a significant number of troops would have to remain in Iraq for another ten years, until 2018.

After a very long and drawn out investigation by Yahoo, it was determined someone (they can't tell me who) used a Yahoo e-mail address in my name to send a complaint to AOL Abuse (my server) with a cc to me. The letter from NH claimed I had been harassing them and that I was going to sue for libel. Everything was false and somebody made up the whole thing. The sad part about all this is Yahoo are not allowed to tell me who it was that did it, but they did say "appropriate action" had been taken against the third party. With the help of some friends who are computer geeks, it was determined the message sent supposedly by me to NH origninated in Mountain Valley, California and I live in the Chicago area. One of the women, not that "one," who was a NH monitor lives not far from Mountain Valley, California.

Yesterday I talked to the Community Action Team at AOL and they told me my ten year record with AOL is spotless and they have not received any complaints about me. This is really puzzling because I have a copy of the e-mail sent by NH to AOL's Abuse Department claiming I was harassing NH.

Somebody somewhere wanted to get rid of me and they went to great lengths to get rid of me and to also try and smear my reputation with AOL by identity theft using a bogus Yahoo e-mail account in my name.

AOL told me I could go to the police department because I have the domain of the sender of the e-mail and file a report. I'm waiting to see what my computer geeks have to say next week.

As Yogi Berra says, "It ain't over until it's over."

I think you did the right thing by getting off the NH site. Too much.

Did you see this string of comments, including one from guess who at NH, on Johnny Dollar re me? You'll love it if you haven't seen it before. Here is the link:

Nice to hear from you and WOKE. I miss our Sunday morning "roasts," but everything is working out for the better, albeit I'm off to a slow start with the blog.

I agree the people over at J$ were pretty nice to me.

I'm still trying to figure out who it was that faked or stole my name and then posted on NH OT Forum using my name and a Yahoo e-mail address. Yahoo at least determined it did not come from me even though "her" at NH was accusing me of posting on their site and she turned me in to AOL, my prime e-mail provider.

Yahoo was able to tell me they have traced it down and they know who the person is that stole my identity and they are planning on taking action against them.

This could be very, very interesting before it is all over if it is the person I suspect from NH who started the whole mess when they first banned me from posting on my own guest blog and later reported me to AOL using a phony or fake Yahoo e-mail address in my name.

That is called FRAUD and the internet providers, including Netscape, which owns the site in question do not take stealing someone's identity lightly.

At this point I don't care who knows what I'm writing so I leave it up to you guys and your disgression what to do with what I have been telling you.

Yahoo, AOL, myself and some close friends who are computer geeks went to a lot of time and effort to track down who has been doing this to me and it is going to be very interesting to see what takes place next.